Acts 26:10

ὃ καὶ ἐποίησα, cf. Galatians 2:10 (Bethge, p. 272), on the distinction between πράσσειν and ποιεῖν Westcott on St.John 3:22. ἐγὼ : emphatic. τῶν ἁγίων, see above Acts 9:13, cf. its use in Acts 9:32; the word aggravates St. Paul's own guilt. Agrippa too would know of pious Jews by the same designation. ἀναιρ. τε αὐτῶν : probably pointing to more deaths, not as expressing the death of Stephen alone, cf. Acts 8:1; Acts 9:1; Acts 22:4. The state of affairs which rendered the murder of St. Stephen possible in the capital would easily account for similar acts of outrage in other places, so that there is no need to suppose with Weiss that the notice here is unhistorical. κατήνεγκα ψῆφον : “I gave my vote,” R.V., the ψῆφος, literally the pebble used in voting, calculum defero sc. in urnam (Grimm), i.e., addo calculum, approbo, cf. ψῆφον φέρειν, ἐπιφ. or ἐκφ. If the phrase is taken quite literally, it is said to denote the vote of a judge, so that Paul must have been a member of the Sanhedrim, and gave his vote for the death of St. Stephen and other Christians. On the other hand the phrase is sometimes taken as simply = συνευδοκεῖν τῇ ἀναιρέσει (so amongst recent writers, Knabenbauer), Acts 22:20. (C. and H. think that if not a member of the Sanhedrim at the time of Stephen's death, he was elected soon after, whilst Weiss holds that if the expression does not imply that the writer represents Paul by mistake as a member of the Sanhedrim, it can only be understood as meaning that by his testimony Paul gave a decisive weight to the verdict in condemnation of the Christians.) Certainly it seems, as Bethge urges, difficult to suppose that Paul was a member of such an august body as the Sanhedrim, not only on account of his probable age at the time of his conversion, but also because of his comparatively obscure circumstances. The Sanhedrim was an assembly of aristocrats, composed too of men of mature years and marked influence, and the question may be asked how Saul of Tarsus, who may not even have had a stated residence in the Holy City, could have found a place in the ranks of an assembly numbering the members of the high priestly families and the principal men of Judæa: see Expositor, June, 1897, and also for the bearing of the statement on the question of Paul's marriage, with Hackett's note, in loco. For the voting in the Sanhedrim see Schürer, div. ii., vol. i., p. 194. E.T. Rendall, p. 336, meets the difficulty above by referring the expression under discussion to a kind of popular vote confirming the sentence of the court against Stephen, for which he finds support in the language of the law and in the narrative of the proto-martyr's condemnation.